He’s Bay Ridge’s bridge to Washington.
Brooklyn’s lone Republican congressman Rep. Dan Donovan, who has been in office for just under a year, took some time to talk Bay Ridge’s hometown paper about issues facing the 11209 and beyond. Insiders charged last year that the freshman legislator would have trouble staying independent from the Republican machine that helped finance his campaign. But Donovan used his position to get conservative, upstate colleagues to revive a previously cut mass-transit bill that will send $100 million a year for five years to New York City, he said.
“Many of my Republican colleagues, they don’t have subways like we have and this money was going to get cut from a program that gave money to urban areas for transportation, but there’s great value in being the lone Republican for New York City in Congress — it allows me to go up to Speaker Paul Ryan and tell him how important things are to my community and in the end we were able to restore this funding,” he said.
Opioid addiction is rocking his Bay Ridge-and-Staten Island district, and the former prosecutor is pushing to get users out of prison and into federally funded treatment. But the Republican wants to do it with the smallest government possible, he said.
“We know that if you are committing crimes while you’re addicted, it’s better to divert you out of the criminal justice system and into treatment, so what this will do is provide grants for local entities,” Donovan said. “The federal role is to provide resources to people with boots on the ground — treatment providers know how to do this better than bureaucrats in Washington.”
Politicos have speculated that the ever-inflammatory Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump will mobilize Democrats to take back the House this November. But Donovan — who faces reelection in the fall and is partial to Ohio Governor John Kasich — said he’ll back anyone who can beat Hillary Clinton.
“There’s some people who say I can’t support each, but the goal should be that Hillary is not the next president of the United States,” he said.
Donovan’s politic parts from Republican primary leaders Tump and Ted Cruz on blanket surveillance of Muslims. Donovan, who represents one of the nation’s largest Muslim populations in Bay Ridge, said investigators should focus on known threats, not people who practice a particular religion.
“I think what people’s focus has to be on is terrorists and people who threaten the safety of our nation, not people who practice a certain faith,” he said. “Our enemy is not [Muslims] but the people who distort that faith.”
The position wouldn’t preclude Bay Ridge from surveillance, his spokesman clarified after the interview.
“You go where the leads tick — where the info says there are folks associated with terrorism — and if that takes you to whatever community, that’s where you go,” said Patrick Ryan. “So instead of focusing on religion and top-down from there, you start at the issue.”
The former Staten Island top prosecutor declined to comment on Kings County District Attorney Ken Thompson’s recommendation against jail time for ex-cop Peter Liang — who was convicted of manslaughter in February after he shot and killed an unarmed man in an East New York public housing stairwell — citing a policy against opining on other district attorneys’ prosecutions.
